Time for sharing, what I have no idea!

Comments

Taking what you said above and on your other thread I hear you on the documentation side of Uber products. I had to go away a look up words and terms on Google just to understand the documentation. ;) What helped me was some Skin E-Book tutorials in the Dreamlight Library about real skin and applying PWsurface to replicate those real life effects. A recipe of sorts which then enabled me to make the adjustments that are needed for each and every skin texture set out there whether it it PWSurface 2 of HSS or UBer Surface/2.. Ok some vendors have pretty much the same skin texture map properties in general but they all have different subtle differences within a single vender's catalogue. A lot of what I do is look at real word surfaces and how the look. Some skin is really redish pink, other plale and white, others with a more tanned looked, others dry and some oliy and so on. Specular highlights are dependent on what lights are used. Area lights seem to be more softer, spot lights more sharp.

On top of that you need good bump, displacement and Subsurface Scattering Maps. I always throw out the spec maps or use them in the Velvet channel. I will dig out a DA link with some good pointers about all the settings. I am off the bed now.

Taking what you said above and on your other thread I hear you on the documentation side of Uber products. I had to go away a look up words and terms on Google just to understand the documentation. ;) What helped me was some Skin E-Book tutorials in the Dreamlight Library about real skin and applying PWsurface to replicate those real life effects. A recipe of sorts which then enabled me to make the adjustments that are needed for each and every skin texture set out there whether it it PWSurface 2 of HSS or UBer Surface/2.. Ok some vendors have pretty much the same skin texture map properties in general but they all have different subtle differences within a single vender's catalogue. A lot of what I do is look at real word surfaces and how the look. Some skin is really redish pink, other plale and white, others with a more tanned looked, others dry and some oliy and so on. Specular highlights are dependent on what lights are used. Area lights seem to be more softer, spot lights more sharp.

On top of that you need good bump, displacement and Subsurface Scattering Maps. I always throw out the spec maps or use them in the Velvet channel. I will dig out a DA link with some good pointers about all the settings. I am off the bed now.

Wow I never would have even thought to look on DeviantArt for tutorials. Going through all your albums there now! I also went a head and added my DeviantArt gallery to my forum signatures, for better or worse. lol. Thanks again for the wealth of information and links!

I know it doesn't give much understanding and if I can get my head sorted and get some time I am hoping to fix that. Well explain as much as I have learnt. Some functions I am still unsure what thery do in terms of the technology. I now the results I get if I use A, B or C just what they exaclty do is another matter. But I think starting a debate about this subject and get input form the community might help go a long way to educate folks. Hopefully in turn I will get the missing pieces.

Time for another one like I did where I started on page 1. This was for August's Dreamlight monthly themed "The Best of Me" and I thought I would celebrate 3 years of DL membership by looking back at the Best of my images and take those aspects and put some together and this is the results.

Time for another one like I did where I started on page 1. This was for August's Dreamlight monthly themed "The Best of Me" and I thought I would celebrate 3 years of DL membership by looking back at the Best of my images and take those aspects and put some together and this is the results.

What I am testing is using the second layer blend mode in Uber Surface 2. Using the Displacement maps for the vien that came with M5 (Phillip texture), plugging them in the Mask layer and using a de-saturated blue/grey for the diffuse channel. I think it works ok. Given I didn't spend much time on this I think I could get better results with better displacement/mask maps. Morris and Jepe have some nice vien displacement maps in my runtime so I will test them out. I couldn't use them with this one as the UV's don't match. Given more time I would expect to be able to adjust them in GIMP to suit. :)

This looks great, and just what I was hoping to play with, but in trying to convert HSS maps to UberSurface2 I ran into some issues which still have me stumped :/

Thanks Gedd.
Sorry I missed that thread. My understanding of HSS/US/2 is somewhat basic with little diffinative information out there so I do alot of test renders. I have posted some suggestions in that thread.

As for using the second layer I haven't got any furher with it as time has been short recently.

I tried to render this scene in DS 4.5.0.137 beta and .114 and 90% of the time Daz Studio crashed so I rolled it back even further to 4.5.0.49 RC2 as in .90 RC3 the area lighting didn’t work right. Nice to see the DUF format working great making the scene in .137 and the opening it up in a version 4 updates old without a hitch.

Rendered this in 7 hours (which is not bad on my computer much faster than 3) on fairly high quality settings both in UE2 and the render settings. Used UE2 (no map) IDL with soft shadows and one distant light with Ray Traced shadows at 2% softness. I render this through AOA set if Atmosphere Cameras. Here I used the colour tint camera coloured very light yellow/white, I think it made the colours pop a little more IMHO.

After rendering I realised all but two small props are items I got through DAZ3D.
Building Invetero and rubble from West Park Legacy by Jack TomalinOstriches by Ken Gilliland
Ferns from Stonemason’s Enchanted Forest
Hanging vines form Andrey Pestryakov’s Tropical Cave
And few of Lisa B’s plants in there too, grasses and vines on the back walls.

Thanks bluemoon. Nice I was going for the semi aged look. AOA camera are fun to play with. If I had given more framing I would have used the Vignette too.

The funny thing is even when using the camera with a plain white filter (so no change from the default camera) the render looks crisper than when rendered through a default camera. I tested it with everything the same just changing the camera and when viewed side by side on my monitor I could see the difference. It takes a little longer to render using these cameras but they sure can enhance a render without too much post work needed.

I still plan on doing some vein sets for US2 and make a tut but no sooner I think about buying a garphics tablet I get malwared and my DVD drive packs up. So while I was at it I maxed out the Ram so I have 3.25 GB to play with now. I am hoping xmas will be a good time for a graphics tablet.

But with Zev0's vascular set this might be easier to do. Take the PSD maps into GIMP, line them up with the skin textures and save them out as a layer on their own and plug the vien maps and displacement maps into the second Layer in US2. That could work. With Zev0's sets being made with zBrush the displacement maps will be so much beter than ones I could ever hope to make.

I so have to ask, WHAT enviro was that Gel image done with? Oh yeah the renders look great (YES!) nice work. But really Is that the Cyclo and and a set? I could, so use that in my Project in the works.

Your renders are awesome. Im new to daz3d or 3d for that matter and it's nice to have something to look up to. I would appreciate it if you could give me some advise on my renders. I seriously don't know how to use lighting for daz except for the spotlight. The light dome pro 2 seems nice but i saw in the thread that it is not working. Again awesome work! Off to your deviantart page.